Fifteen years ago barbecue and shrimp were the favorites at community fundraisers in Canyon Lake.
“Lots of different choices, but nobody was doing anything with chicken,” said Carol Bisset with the Canyon Lake United Methodist Church, 206 Flintstone Dr. in Startzville. “I thought to myself my goodness, why don’t we invent a chicken-noodle dinner for our church and make a few dollars that we can put back into the church in the way we see would honor our community?”
“From that point, it started to evolve into let’s really do something with chicken and noodles because I got the noodle maker and (Debbie Drum’s) got the recipe to make the noodles, so let’s do it,” Bisset did.
Nine years later the church ladies are still grinding out noodles for what’s become a major Canyon Lake fundraiser.
This year’s Chicken Noodle Dinner runs from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Friday. Tickets are $15. Children under six eat for free. Menu includes homemade noodles made from scratch, special mashed potatoes (“all jazzed up with sour cream”), chicken, green beans with bacon, Texas sheet cake and iced tea.
Bisset, Drum, Janet Marton, Becky Mitchell, Diane Fisher, Gini Ruthven, and Pam Berry spent 10 days in January making parmesan noodles for the event.
“It’s for joy,” Bisset said. “We really do it because it brings us together to do something that harkens back to another time of old-fashioned fun…I can’t tell you how much fun we have at our noodle parties.”
Last year’s dinner raised almost $5,000.
“We’re a private group, so we can put our money where we want it to go,” Bisset said. “That’s pretty cool, I think.”
